CloudresearchReviews of cloudresearch.com

Do not engage - misleading advertising, sly ways of soliciting personal legal data, unprofessional communication from so called client success specialists. Misleading advertising, lack of transparency and accountability at Connect CloudResearch for participants. Soliciting legal personal data from participants for ID checks, to then subjectively deny participation despite meeting eligibility criteria as set out under their terms. Do not engage, do not bother.

Cloudresearch supplies you with what is supposed to be a way of earning extra money by completing surveys provided by an assorted amount of researchers that vary from university students to firms. Unfortunately their payscale is an insult and it is like working at a sweat shop. Cloudresearch does not set the rate of pay, but they do also do not stop the abuse by researchers who can pay you as little as 25 cents for a survey. Law firms also use their services to do a mini mock jury but once again the pay is pathetic. For those of you that have ever participated in an actual mock jury, you can expect at least $30-50 per hour. On this platform you are lucky to get $15 total. This company is a complete joke. They are getting rich off those that choose to participate, which is why after 5 months I closed my account. The most I ever made in one month was a little over $300. NOT worth it!

Like others who have posted, I was suddenly and quite aggressively banned from the site. They said that my account has been restricted due to non-compliance with their terms and conditions of use. They're saying that I did not adhere to these terms. I don't even know what they're talking about and they did not answer my emails after that.

Surprise Ban I completed 123 surveys over the course of 5 months, and had no rejection. Suddenly one day, I had a message on my dashboard that said: Waitlisted. We are unable to grant you access to projects at this time. After some quick googling, I discovered it is very common to be suddenly waitlisted (aka banned) for no apparent reason. Also, there is no way to appeal the ban, or ever get it removed; it's permanent. While not being able to do their survey does not affect me in any meaningful way (I was just doing it for giggles) why would someone behave like this? No reason to hit the kill switch on participants who have done nothing wrong—and they don’t even have the decency to explain why. This lack of transparency and fairness is unkind and inconsiderate. Who raised you people? Disgraceful.

I was invited to the Cloud Research platform years ago after providing excellent work on MTurk. I only do this sort of low-hanging-fruit work because I have major health issues that make traditional employment more difficult for me to handle. During my time with CR, I never received any complaints. There were no rejections. My score, before they did away with it entirely, was perfect. The biggest thing that bothered me about CR before June was that they required participants to refresh their often slow-loading platform page roughly every 12 seconds just to "catch" higher-paying studies. They set up the site so that competition is incredibly fierce. Although they allow a page refresher, which is something other sites often bar, a study with hundreds slots can disappear in a matter of seconds. That said, I had no major issues beyond this problem. Then I was waitlisted in June right after completing a study. CR gave no warning or reason. The event happened a few days after Cloud Research mods approved me as an authorized user on their reddit forum. I thought this was strange at the time. I had been an approved user from the start (i.e., several years). After the waitlisting, I reached out to CR Support about pending approvals/money. I didn't ask for a reason. I knew from reading reddit posts that CR often waitlists without giving a reason. Yet... When I made an inquiry about pending approval, future account access, etc., I was told clearly that I had a great record of following their TOS. On one hand, I was relieved to hear that I wasn't the problem in terms of the TOS. On the other hand, it left me wondering what the hell happened. What is frustrating and, frankly, harmful -- both to the emotions and finances of participants and Cloud Research's reputation -- is that they just dump people like some sort of narcissistic abuser in a discard phase. They pick and choose what they tell users about the reasons. And it's all done without any care about the humans they claim to care about through research. I'll never know why they did it. They treat most people who use the site like numbers/cogs rather than people. I was lucky to receive a little insight likely because I had built a rapport with one of the managers; not that it mattered in the end. Was it demographics? Was it because I didn't complete all of literally hundreds of unpaid About You questions (i.e., provide them with free data)? Was it because I had just bypassed a specific number of returned HITs? Was it something they read on my reddit account that they just didn't like, even though it was the same account from the beginning and they knew my handle and had access to the public posts all along? Was it because I was working fairly steadily and then in June had to work less? Again, I'll never know. I didn't make a lot of money from CR every month, but it was a source of some income for me. The site was a good way to gap fill when I needed a little extra cash. Right before this happened, I had the process of refreshing, answering, etc. down to a system that I foolishly began to plan into my overall earnings rather than as a side extra. So, it was disheartening to one moment believe I could rely on this platform and the next watch it all go away. The reasons I'm giving CR a 1-star rating instead of a 2 or 3 rating and certainly not a 4 or 5 rating are: 1. The waitlist process is disrespectful and shows that CR and associated researchers don't actually value human beings beyond the money they can make off cheaply acquired data. I'm not surprised by this overall, it's the nature of academic research, but I believe strongly that if CR isn't going to be respectful than neither should the people they burn. 2. CR expects a ton of free data via the About You questions. There has also been plenty of proof here and elsewhere that they're now asking a lot of unpaid screener questions during application processes to gain precious data without paying. 3. CR expects waitlisted users to continue to provide answers for longitudinal studies. They don't email participants about these studies, which means they also expect former users to keep logging back into the site to check for updates... UNPAID. 4. I've heard from more than one source that CR waitlists instead of deactivating accounts because they can then say to potential investors that they have X number of active accounts, even when those users will never be given another opportunity to participate on the site. As a result, I now recommend to anyone who becomes waitlisted that they gather all their financial data from the site and then deactivate. This is another example of CR making money off of users without paying them.

I was waitlisted after completing surveys for almost one year plus i had a close to perfect 850 grade

Waitlisted with no reason given. Their customer service team said I was permanently banned and ineligible for any studies before I had actually had the opportunity to participate in any. They could not give me any reason as to why, no matter how many times I politely asked. Of course this was only JUST after they allowed me to create my account to submit a ton of demographic & personal information. Incredibly unprofessional behaviour, lacking any transparency and a support team that seems to be either completely unaware of what's going on, or just painfully unwilling to do anything except copy & paste an email with a generic "waitlist" message with no logic or process behind that decision making. In other words, it's definitely not worth your time! Just stick to Prolific, Respondent, User Interviews. They pay better and they all have a much more professional and transparent process & team.

Disqualified. . for absolutely no reason, scam survey's. I'll be avoiding all future ones from now!